


Herpo the foul

by Avroux



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abuse, Not as dark as it has the potential to be, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28839711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avroux/pseuds/Avroux
Kudos: 1





	Herpo the foul

Herpopolies was five years old when he first experienced death. His mother died in childbirth along with his stillborn sister Leto, he watched as she stopped breathing; transfixed as the air around her turned cold as her magic left and the midwives folded her arms to carry her out. It was fascinating, terrifying, Herpopolies thought back on it often as he grew. His father never recovered from her death. Herpopolies knew that he was not normal enough for his father, what child finds his mother’s death a point of study and not something to mourn over. His father found him disgusting.

His father, Ulysses, was an angry man. A powerful wizard, in the man’s own opinion, that had a pathetically weak heir that was not quite right in the mind; despite the brilliant marks he got in the school. To Herpopolies his father and home were a place of avoidance, the man had found his home and calling in the bottle; leaving a violent husk of a widower. Herpopolies knew he was going to be small unlike his larger father, his mother had been quite small as well so it was not unexpected. His father just took that as another reason to say that he was unworthy of living in the true wizarding world.

So Herpopolies lived in his books. The knowledge he gained from them was his greatest weapon against his father. As he grew, the more discontent the world and government seemed to be. Herpopolies and many others seemed to smell the oncoming war. It came when Herpopolies was sixteen years old and just graduated with full marks from his school.  
Herpopolies found the war captivating.  
But he couldn’t help but hate it as well.  
As much as death fascinated him, he feared it more than anything.  
He didn’t want to die. That much he knew, that much he understood. So he did one of the only things he knew he was good at, he studied. He wanted to know everything there was to know about death and previous attempts to escape it, not that he was going to try any of them of course.  
That would be foolish.  
A madman’s goal.  
His father got more violent as Herpopolies stayed at home researching instead of fighting in the war as a true wizard would. Had there not been a war he would have left the damned place as soon as possible to work as a scholar, but the war made that all but impossible. Though Herpopolies was not to be swayed, in his mind he was just one breakthrough away.

The war raged on, as did his father. The drunk of a man escaped off to war to fight in the new battle to the east for a few weeks at the most. Herpopolies saw this as a gift from Lady Magic, weeks with no words, no brutal hits to distract him from the last needed breakthrough. Potions upon potion sat in his small lab, papers of research were strewn about the entire place when he heard a crash in his upper living area. A person sat bleeding in the room.  
They were magical, Herpopolies could tell instantly, male, young, and most certainly dead or at least dying. Appareration accident it seemed. Herpololies watched in detached fascination as the younger wizard drew his last breath and an old but familiar feeling of the other’s magic, his soul left. Herpopolies was entranced as he felt the soul leave, he could practically see as it left the upper area.  
The soul.  
The soul!  
That’s what his research was missing! Leaving the body where it was Herpopolies rushed down to his lab ignoring the many potions lining the walls under stasis spells. Rummaging through his diagrams, his maths, and runes he started moving them around connecting the lines, the dots. Now all he had to do was create the right ritual.  
If you split your soul just right, you could potentially never die.  
But what kind of ritual?  
This entire revelation was making Herpopolies tired. This would take more research, a good thing that was one thing he was good at. Weeks passed in the basement, drawing sources and information from everything he could, it wasn’t long before his father would be back from the east battle. Herpopolies during this interval of time had buried the boy who had passed away in his home, no one asked about the six-foot patch of overturned dirt near the entrance to the behind his home.  
The lower area was filled with papers upon papers of research, rituals and runes lined the walls. Herpopplies was in the middle of drawing his eighth possible ritual circle when he heard his father enter through the upper door. The man was drunk, absolutely wasted, Herpopolies could smell it from the basement. He sat stiffly on the floor of his lab, waiting for the inebriated man to slam the door open. It took the man a good few minutes to stumble through the house before doing exactly what Herpopolies had expected.  
It hurt, it always hurt.  
It hurt more this time. That was confusing to Herpopolies.  
Why?  
Knowing his father wasn’t going to stop anytime soon Herpopolies tried to move away in a fit of pain hazed panic making a dash for his wand. The brilliant green light of the unfamiliar spell was unforgettable, he laid on the floor Wand raised at the body of his father. The man was dead. He was laying on Herpopolies’ most recent ritual array when the runes started to grow. The same eerie green light of the beautiful curse that saved him only to eventually condemn him. That’s when it happened, Herpopolies laughed a loud unhinged laughter. This was the breakthrough! He continued with his research with glee, using his father as a medium he went with the experimental soul slicing ritual.  
He felt it!  
It worked!  
His father eventually found himself right next to the unknown young man that had helped the last breakthrough. Herpopolies recorded all his findings with a lightness he had never felt before. The paper’s head with the title, Horcruxes; To live forever, by Herpopolies the Great. He had created the next greatest piece of magic.  
He forgot that most people get sick at the thought of killing.  
He forgot that murder is a punishable offense.  
He forgot that people should never mess with the soul.  
With his research locked safely in the most warded area of his house Herpopolies left for some food. This was a cause for celebration. When he was done though he wandered around the town, observing with detached fascination the many poverty-stricken witches and wizards that walked about.  
He wandered to the forest bordering the town, the forest whose entrance now held his father. Years past, his research lay in the warded and now very cursed area of his house, instability grabbed at his mind. Whispers filled the empty house with soft murmurs of the possibilities of new victims, his father’s voice like to beat at his mind giving him violent headaches. He became known for his dark spells and curses, most well known though for his creation of two curses. One that killed instantly, and one that causes so much pain you’d go insane under long exposure to it. He became known as the foul one.  
Looking at his pride and joy, his research he ripped off most of the title and his own name, ‘ To live forever, and the last half of his name was torn off in a fit of mad rage. Holding the few pieces of ripped papers he closed the draw, sealed the wards and reapplied the curses, and left the house.  
His body would be found eight days later on top of his father’s unknown grave, death by killing curse.  
Death by his own wand.  
His spell work in the wards of his house wouldn’t be torn down for a thousand years, and when it was it was by a group of British curse breakers. They sold the old, well preserved ripped papers to a collector of ancient artifacts, Greggory Slughorn. Very few copies of the accursed work were ever made, one just so happening to make it in the Hogwarts library in 1946 just in time for a young sixteen-year boy in green robe to see the first few pages.  
Horcruxes the darkest of arts, By Herpo the foul, edited by Greggory Slughorn, 1910.


End file.
